The Lean-Agile PMO

Just chatting to numerous visitors to the PMO Flashmob and PMO Learning stand at Project Challenge last week gives us a very clear insight – more and more PMOs are supporting hybrid delivery methods in their project organisations. And some guidance on how to do this would be most welcome!

The two most prominent delivery methods are of course – Waterfall and Agile.

Earlier in the year, PMO Flashmob released the Inside PMO Report on the Agile PMO. The report came from a session with 10 PMO Managers who had already started this journey some time ago. The report covers how they approached it and image below gives some real practical insight.

Essentially PMO practitioners want to know how the functions and services provided by the PMO might change to support Agile projects – and then how to perform these functions and services when their are different delivery approaches within single programmes or across a portfolio.

The insights from the report showed that ultimately we have to be good at the fundamentals of project management (regardless of the delivery approach) – being very disciplined in areas such as business cases, benefits realisation, earned value and risk management. These are the ‘tougher’ parts of project management to get right and the complete opposite of what we’ve been led to believe about Agile delivery needing a lighter touch from the PMO.

The Lean-Agile PMO one day course gets into the detail about the process and capability changes needed in the PMO to support both Waterfall and Agile delivery approaches.

It gets into how to evaluate the status of Agile projects; how to monitor the business case; how the PMO acts as a buffer; the governance framework and assurance. All these nitty gritty areas that the PMO needs to understand how they operate.

It’s a full-on course for those who already understand project delivery and the key areas of project management. It assumes that you’re OK with the more traditional side of project delivery methods like Waterfall – meaning that the day is purely focused on the PMO role in supporting Agile delivery.

If you and your PMO are currently facing the challenge of supporting Agile delivery this is the course for you – get the inside track in one day and take away a whole host of practical approaches that you can use straight away.